Why Iran?
The motivations behind Operation Epic Fury don't point to a coherent strategy. They point to a convergence of interests — some of which benefit most when the conflict never resolves.
Operation Epic Fury · Brief 001 · Fictional Analytical Scenario
The official framing is simple: Iran was building toward nuclear capability, the moment was right, and decisive action was taken. That framing doesn’t survive serious scrutiny.
The motivations are not singular. Assessed by analytical weight, they look like this: Netanyahu’s decades-long strategic project accounts for roughly 35% — the Gaza-Hezbollah-Iran sequencing follows a map that originates in Tel Aviv, not Washington. Trump provides the muscle. Netanyahu provided the map. Financial beneficiaries — defence contractors, oil volatility traders, people around Trump with market exposure to sustained confrontation — account for another 25%. Legacy hunger, the need to be seen as decisive, accounts for a further 25%. Distraction and chaos are real but secondary — consequence, not cause.
The most important finding is what this weighting implies: a fully isolated Iran that collapses quickly is less profitable than a sustained, managed confrontation. The people who benefit most from this conflict have every structural incentive to ensure it is never cleanly resolved.
The Contradiction Nobody Is Connecting
Russia and Iran are in a documented mutual support relationship. Iranian drones in Ukraine. Russian diplomatic cover at the UN Security Council. Shared sanctions evasion infrastructure. Military intelligence sharing. The coherent containment strategy is to sanction both simultaneously — squeeze both, limit their ability to sustain each other.
Trump relaxed Russian oil sanctions as part of Ukraine-adjacent negotiations.
The consequence: Russian oil revenues increase. Russia’s capacity to sustain its Iran support infrastructure is preserved. Iran’s resilience under US military pressure is directly underwritten by Russian revenue flows.
The United States is escalating militarily against Iran while economically enabling Iran’s principal state backer — not through oversight, but through two separate transactional relationships that nobody in the room is connecting.
This is not strategic incoherence by accident. It is what happens when every relationship is managed transactionally, in isolation, with no one integrating the second-order consequences. The perpetual conflict generator runs on exactly this kind of institutional blind spot.
The Gulf States Didn’t Want This
A persistent analytical error has been assuming Gulf state enthusiasm for confrontation with Iran. That assumption is wrong.
Saudi Arabia and Iran restored diplomatic relations in March 2023 — brokered by China, not the United States. Gulf sovereign wealth funds are deeply integrated into global financial systems that require stability. The Abqaiq attack of 2019 demonstrated Iranian reach into Saudi infrastructure. They are not eager for a repeat at scale.
The Strait of Hormuz carries approximately 20% of global oil. Any Iranian retaliation targeting tanker traffic directly wounds Gulf revenue. Dubai’s entire economic model requires stability, open trade and international confidence. The Gulf states are nominally US-aligned and cannot publicly oppose Washington. They are privately alarmed. The Netanyahu-driven logic of this conflict is not their logic. They moved on from Iran as existential threat. Israel did not.
What This Is Actually Producing
Every stated US objective is generating the opposite outcome.
Degrading Iranian nuclear capability is producing hardened public resolve and accelerated covert programme dispersion. Reducing Iranian regional influence is producing Gulf states distancing from Washington and China filling the diplomatic vacuum. Demonstrating strength is producing alarmed NATO allies and an accelerating Global South decoupling from US-led institutions. Containing the Russia-Iran axis is being contradicted by the Russian oil sanctions relaxation. Stabilising regional order has elevated Hormuz risk and destabilised oil markets.
Bottom Line
This is not a war with a theory of victory. It is a conflict with a theory of sustained profitability for a specific set of actors. The chaos framing — Trump as pigeon knocking over the chess board — is emotionally satisfying but lets the architects off the hook. There are people in this who know exactly which pieces they are moving.
The United States as an institution is the piece being moved.
The central argument of this brief — that the war broke out just as a deal was available — has been confirmed. On 27 February 2026, Oman’s Foreign Minister announced a breakthrough: Iran had agreed to never stockpile enriched uranium and to full IAEA verification. Talks expected to resume 2 March. The US and Israel struck on 28 February. The deal was available. The war started the day after the breakthrough.
This is a synthesis of Brief 001 of the Operation Epic Fury series — a fictional analytical scenario examining the current Middle East conflict.
Read the full brief with complete analysis and sourcing at substack.joelmorin.com/brief-001.html
The complete nine-brief series is at substack.joelmorin.com